How much taper is normal? 14gauge

[greg9504]

Hello,
Plasma - Hypertherm Powermax 600 with retrofit Duramax machine torch
Regular shielded consumables
40 amps 221 IPM, 0.094 Pierce Height, 0.062 Cut Height
Kerf width in sheetcam 0.0591
THC was enabled, Langmuir CrossfirePro table.

These are my measurements, done without any post cutting grinding/wire wheel etc.

tapertest14g.PNG (12.57 KiB) Viewed 722 times

Now my measurements might be off a few tho either way. So lest say a taper of about 0.025 over 0.074 thickness.
Good, bad, normal?
Thanks

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[robertspark]

viewtopic.php?t=21778

more specifically (part of that thread)
viewtopic.php?t=21778#p130093

[DieselFumes]

I would say that's pretty normal and looks great. You may be able to get a few parts that are near perfect but I haven't found plasma to be super consistent. It's not the tool for every job but a great tool for many.

[greg9504]

Thanks for the replies. I did a test on some 1/4" material tonight and I ended up with noticeable parallelogram effect on the outer rectangle cut. Ran out of time to investigate but research on here points to worn/damaged consumables.

[robertspark]

Are you cutting in the right direction?

viewtopic.php?t=11769#p64144

[greg9504]

Hi,
Thanks yes I was going in the right direction. The holes and taper got better after changing out the nozzle and electrode. The nozzle looked OK but the electrode had a bit of "blob" on the tip. I guess that was enough to cause the problem. I reran my circle test, results below. I'm getting taper/bevel in the 2.5 degree range, which is what I've seen posted by Jim Colt. It's really hard to see in the pictures, but with the bad electrode I was getting the parallelogram effect, where a circle cut out would look like:

Here the one on the left is good, the one on the right is bad, it's much more noticeable in person. These are the slugs from cutting out a 1.5" hole.

Close up of the bad electrode

Good test cut

measurements, just need to lower kerf a bit I think.

Thanks for the help.